Good Books: Reviews

dog-reading-bookEverybody and their dog is a book reviewer these days. I review the books I read because it helps me to understand and remember what I read.

Read a few of my reviews. If you like the kind of books I like, you’ll have a collection of good books to put on your list.

A book review is an opinion but I try to give reasons for my opinions so you can judge if I’m being fair. I usually don’t review books I didn’t like, because life is too short. So even when I’m critical of a book, if it’s on this list, it’s worthy of your attention.

 

Reluctant Android Becomes Sentient

Reluctant Android is now available for pre-order as an ebook from Amazon and Smashwords. Pre-order means you can order it now for $3.99 and it will be delivered to you on September 1, 2018, the official launch date. Meanwhile you can … Continue reading

Lessons from His Greatness, The Gatsby

Careers have been built on mining the depths of The Great Gatsby, that most iconic of American novels. I recently read it for the third time to see what I could learn about the craft of writing. I decided to stay close … Continue reading

King – Euphoria

You don’t expect much drama from anthropologists in the jungle, but the members of this trio divide their angst between their simmering and barely acknowledged love triangle and their understanding of pre-industrial river people of New Guinea in the 1930’s. The … Continue reading

Kertesz – Fatelessness

This is the autobiographical story of a holocaust survivor, Hungarian writer and Nobel Prize-winner, Imre Kertesz.  To me, it is reminiscent of Primo Levi and even Victor Frankl. A boy of fourteen is snatched from Budapest by the Nazis and … Continue reading

Middle Passage – Johnson

The title suggests a historical novel, for the Middle Passage was the sea route used by slavers going from West Africa to the Caribbean. The book does invoke important aspects of the slave trade, life at sea in the 1830’s, … Continue reading

The Story of Edgar Sawtelle – Wroblewski

The Story of Edgar Sawtelle is famous for cribbing the plot of Shakespeare’s Hamlet. The ‘king’ (Edgar’s father) is murdered by his brother Claude (Claudius) who then beds the father’s wife, Trudy (Gertrude). Edgar is the half-mad prince who accidentally … Continue reading

Butler – Parable of the Sower

The title refers to Matthew-13 of the Christian Bible, a parable in which a sower scatters seeds indiscriminately. Some grow, some don’t, depending on where they fall. A  preacher (e.g., Jesus) is analogous to the sower; sometimes his words fall … Continue reading